Integrated Physiological, Genetic and Demographic Responses to Long-Term Habitat Change

对长期栖息地变化的综合生理、遗传和人口统计反应

• 批准号: 1558071
• 负责人: Anne Bronikowski
• 金额: $ 86.9万
• 依托单位: Iowa State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-03-01 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1558071&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Integrated; Physiological; Genetic; Demographic; Responses

With this research project, the PI seeks to understand the ecological, physiological, and genetic health measures that determine a population's fate. This research will result in an answer to the question why some populations thrive and grow, whereas others, in similar habitats, wither and ultimately go extinct. Another goal of this research is to utilize collections of frozen tissue collected over the past two decades to test for physiological health and genetic state of the individuals that comprise both healthy and declining populations. Ultimately, this research will result in a better predictive power about how animals move across their landscapes, utilize resources, and persist in the wild by taking into consideration the physiological and genetic signatures of individuals. The PI's undertakings will involve many high school and college students, as well as graduate students working towards their master-of-science or doctorate degrees. Sweeping anthropogenic changes to environmental landscapes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries pose urgent challenges to organisms and their populations. Potential organismal responses to unsuitable and disintegrating habitats are to move, perish, acclimate ecologically, or adapt evolutionarily. Predicting among these population outcomes requires long-term studies in which species, demography, physiology, ecology, and genetic variability have been monitored before as well as during a period of habitat change. The PIs will couple long-term spatial and temporal data, spanning 1976 to present, on variation in physiological processes and life-history traits with genetic markers of population health to develop a framework for integrating physiology, genetics, and demography in predicting responses of populations facing habitat degradation. Furthermore they will couple measures of individual state variables (physiological plasticity, genotype, and fitness measures) to link individual-level states and heterogeneity among individuals to population-level demography. They will accomplish these goals of measuring longterm heath indices by mining or longterm tissue and DNA collections on replicate populations of garter snakes inhabiting the northeastern Sierra Nevada mountain range. To accomplish the synthetic goals, mathematical models with structural equation modeling and additional modeling approaches will be developed and utilized. This will result in a fully-linked model of the relationships among physiological and genetic variation, organismal life-history variation, and environmental variation.

通过这个研究项目，PI试图了解决定种群命运的生态、生理和遗传健康措施。这项研究将回答为什么一些种群繁荣成长，而另一些种群在相似的栖息地却枯萎并最终灭绝。本研究的另一个目标是利用过去二十年来收集的冷冻组织来测试健康种群和衰退种群中个体的生理健康和遗传状态。最终，这项研究将通过考虑个体的生理和遗传特征，更好地预测动物如何在他们的景观中移动，利用资源，并在野外生存。PI的项目将涉及许多高中生和大学生，以及攻读理学硕士或博士学位的研究生。20世纪末和21世纪初，人类对环境景观的全面改变给生物及其种群带来了紧迫的挑战。对不适宜和正在解体的生境的潜在有机体反应是迁移、灭亡、生态适应或进化适应。预测这些种群的结果需要长期的研究，在此之前以及在栖息地变化期间对物种、人口统计学、生理学、生态学和遗传变异进行监测。这些指数将把1976年至今的生理过程和生活史特征变化的长期时空数据与种群健康的遗传标记结合起来，建立一个综合生理学、遗传学和人口学的框架，以预测面临栖息地退化的种群的反应。此外，他们将结合个体状态变量的测量（生理可塑性、基因型和适合度测量），将个体水平的状态和个体之间的异质性与种群水平的人口统计学联系起来。他们将通过对居住在内华达山脉东北部的吊带蛇复制种群的长期组织和DNA采集来实现测量长期健康指数的目标。为了实现综合目标，将开发和利用具有结构方程建模和附加建模方法的数学模型。这将导致生理和遗传变异、生物生活史变异和环境变异之间关系的一个完全联系的模型。